The Yankees’ manager admitted that he’s still feeling the sting after being eliminated by the rival Boston Red Sox in the ALDS.

“It definitely stings,” Boone said. “We had a team with an opportunity to chase the ultimate prize – and that’s why we’re doing this. So, any time the season comes to an abrupt halt like that, it stings. But there’s work to be done and it’s been fun kinda diving into the plans heading into next year and hopefully making some moves that will help us get over the top next year.”

Boone was asked about his decision to trust starting pitchers with a slow hook during the ALDS.

“With CC (Sabathia), in the end of the day, I think we always default to whoever we bring in is just going to work,” Boone said. “You’ve got to piece together the game somehow. I felt like in the case of CC, there was certainly a case to be made after the (Andrew) Benintendi at-bat to go to the ‘pen there. I also felt like we had kind of a plan that we could get six, maybe seven innings tops out of our high-leverage guys that we could line up.

“Now, there were some issues though. If we had any kind of a hiccup in there, we were in a lot of trouble. So, I felt pretty good about the CC decision.”

Star slugger Giancarlo Stanton ran into postseason troubles, but Boone came away impressed with Stanton’s professionalism. Stanton batted .222 in the ALDS with six strikeouts in 18 series at-bats.

“He was so workmanlike,” Boone said. “He was a really good teammate. You could never tell if he had hit a couple home runs or was going through a rough patch during the week with the way he approached his business. On balance, he ends up having a really productive season for us.”

With free agency as a hot topic, Gio suggested that the Bombers could add a big-name bat.

“We’ll have you on again when you guys sign either (Bryce) Harper or (Manny) Machado and we’ll talk to you about that,” Giannotti commented.